Beyond the Break

by Kristen Mae

  After a while, we grew accustomed to our chauffeur’s high speed driving and allowed our attention to drift outward toward the Italian countryside. Grassy hills rolled away from us in every direction, an ocean of green dotted with tall narrow trees, contrasted by a cloudless, impossibly blue sky.

  “Holy shit,” said Raymond. “We’re really in Italy.”

  Claire put a hand on her window like touching the glass was the same as touching the view, and I saw her chest rise and fall with awe-filled breath. “It’s just like a movie.” She turned to the driver. “Signore, posso abbassare la finestra?”

  He made eye contact with her in his rearview mirror and gave her a surprised half smile. “Naturalmente, signora.”

  Claire grinned back at me and rolled down her window, proud of her first successful communication in Italian.

  “Show off.” Raymond opened his own window in the front seat and leaned through the opening to inhale his first lungful of Italian country air.

  “I understood her,” I said, lowering the window on my side. The warm air felt dry and crisp and had a sweeter scent than the damp, ozone-infused air of Florida.

  Claire, I noticed, kept her gaze on the countryside. The rolling hills erupted into expansive vineyards. Stretching toward the horizon, rows and rows of grape vines climbed up their stakes, and ancient stone houses popped up here and there amid the greenery as if they’d grown out of the earth as surely as the rest of the landscape.

  After a few more miles, the rolling vineyards were replaced by more closely grouped houses, all very old, and made of stone or covered in pastel stucco.

  Claire straightened in her seat beside me. “Did you know they cannot change the color of the exterior of their homes here without permission from the government?”

  Raymond looked back at her, surprised. “Seriously?”

  Claire nodded. “Seriously. And they have a limited palette from which to choose. It’s to maintain the integrity of the historic landscape. While the Italian people embrace modern comforts, they take immense pride in preserving their history.”

  “Rightly so,” I said, smiling inwardly at her very Claire-like textbook explanation. The pastoral scenery, the homes, even the aggressive movements of the cars, everything made me ache for Oren to witness it with me. I wanted to give him this experience to make up for everything I couldn’t be.

  The driver slowed the van as traffic condensed on all sides. I leaned away from the window toward the center of the van to get a better view. A massive stone wall with an archway lay directly ahead of us, and the cars around us lurched and halted like worker ants jockeying for position to get through.

  “That’s it,” Claire said, pointing at the immense structure and beaming at me.

  We’d learned about the historic wall that encircled Lucca, constructed hundreds of years ago as a fortification. Now I’d be trapped in there with Claire, as if I didn’t already feel trapped enough in my own body. But…I wanted to be trapped with her. Wanted to put a wall around the two of us.

  Our van inched forward, and I spotted the people atop the wall—walkers, joggers, even a few cyclists. I remembered reading about how Lucca was largely a pedestrian city since the thousands-year-old infrastructure of tightly packed commercial and residential buildings didn’t have much room for parking or multidirectional traffic. Most of Lucca’s residents either walked or zoomed around town on tiny mopeds called motos.

  We rolled underneath the stone archway and into another world. Every surface shone grey or golden, worn to porousness or freshly restored to historical accuracy. Only the shiny, modern cars and buzzing motos convinced me we hadn’t traveled back in time.

  A massive cathedral to our right towered over us, the sign nearby marking it as “San Frediano.”

  “The city of a hundred churches,” Claire said, and I looked at her and the view beyond her and had an especially powerful feeling of geographical vertigo. I grabbed my door handle in an effort to feel solid again.

  “Siamo qui,” said the driver, pulling to a stop.

  Claire leaned forward. “Piazza dell’Anfiteatro?”

  The driver nodded. He seemed entranced by her, maybe by her accent, maybe by the novelty of an American woman speaking the language so confidently. He was staring at her like he wished she would never stop talking. I understood how he felt.

  We unloaded our luggage and instruments from the taxi and dragged everything into a large plaza enclosed with a wall of Italian buildings, all three to five stories tall and smashed against one another so that they formed an unbroken oval. It would be our main meeting place for the festival and also where our apartments were located.

  Claire gestured to the buildings, her eyes dancing with excitement. “This is the ancient Anfiteatro, once a coliseum, but now the perfect foundation for these restaurants, cafés and apartment buildings.”

  Raymond leaned toward me and stage-whispered, “Should we tip her for the tour?”

  I laughed, and Claire rolled her eyes. “You’re just hilarious, Raymond,” she said.

  The sun shone crisp and bright, illuminating throngs of busy pedestrians wandering this way and that, en route to attend to whatever it is that Italian people attend to. In the center of the bustle, a wrinkled old man sat on a bench throwing bread at a flock of pigeons waddling impatiently and leaving droppings all over the cobblestones at his feet. I took a picture of him with my phone.

  We soon located our three colleagues, whose van had somehow managed to arrive before ours despite our driver’s reckless speeds. Katrina stood across from Paolo and a hairy mustached man, gesturing with her hands and looking annoyed. She greeted us with an impatient sigh. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “One of the apartments had a pipe burst. It won’t be ready for at least a week. I’m trying to get them to find us another space, but the music festival causes everything to get booked for these few weeks.”

  Claire shrugged. “Hazel and I can bunk for a few days. As long as they refund the money for that week, it’s no biggie, right? It’ll give us a little extra to spend on pasta.” She grinned at me, waiting for me to agree.

  My mouth had turned to cotton, but I managed what I hoped was an accommodating smile. A pipe burst? This was more than too predictable. This was the universe dead set on tearing me to pieces. I tried to remind myself that a pair of friends rooming together was not really anything out of the ordinary, but it didn’t keep my heart from trying to claw its way out of my chest.

  “Besides,” Claire said, “we’ve already slept together, haven’t we, Hazel?”

  I blinked at her.

  She rolled her eyes and laughed. “On the plane? Remember? You make a comfy pillow.”

  Katrina still looked reluctant. “Well…if you guys don’t mind, I guess it’s fine. I’m sure we’ll have no problem getting the money refunded. Sure you’re okay with that, Hazel?”

  I nodded and forced my smile bigger, probably a little bigger than necessary. The bright sun felt like a spotlight illuminating my discomfort, and I could feel myself breaking out in a sweat.

  “Good,” said Katrina, and then she turned back to Paolo to finalize negotiations for the complete and total loss of my mind.

  SIXTEEN

  That first night in Lucca, our group went out to dinner, discussing at great length the difference between authentic Italian fare and what we knew as Italian food back in the States. The bread there was hard as a rock, nearly inedible until softened by obscene amounts of olive oil. The pasta was softer than we expected though, and fresher and more flavorful than what we were used to back home. The wine was cheaper than bottled water; we drank both.

  By the time Claire and I finally settled into our apartment for the night, my exhaustion far surpassed my anxiety over sleeping so near her. She insisted I take the single bedroom and set herself up on the couch. I’d expected to toss and turn all night, but I fell into an immediate and mercifully dreamless sleep.

  She shook me awake at what felt like five
in the morning, leaning over me in a strapless eyelet sundress, the open window behind her bouncing sunlight through her curls and casting an angelic glow around her as if to intentionally taunt me. I rubbed my eyes. “I know it feels like the middle of the night,” she said, “but it’s ten, and we have a million things to see!”

  The six of us—our quartet, Frank, and Paolo—toured several churches in the morning, ate a lunch of pasta and wine, and then walked the entire wall surrounding Lucca. The top of the wall was wider than a two-way street and had been turned into a pedestrian thoroughfare with soaring chestnut trees lining either side, shading the people below.

  Later we went to see Puccini’s house and found it closed, so we visited a garden instead. Then more bread, more pasta, more wine. The day was so filled I only felt crazy once. We were walking along the wall and I said, “I wonder if the roots of the trees grow down into the tunnels of the wall,” and Claire grabbed my arm. “Yes, the tunnels!” she said. “Remember reading about that? I was wondering exactly the same thing!” I seized at her sudden touch, but quickly recovered when one of the other members of our group distracted me by pointing out an interesting piece of medieval architecture.

  Oren and I spoke via video chat after I got back Sunday night. I explained to him about the problem with the apartments, how Claire and I had to room together temporarily. His eyebrows went up but I bugged my eyes out at him so he’d understand that Claire was in the apartment now. I only told him, “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

  An hour after our chat, I received a message from him:

  If something happens, I won’t be angry with you. Just please don’t give me any details. I don’t think I could handle details.

  I sat stunned for a long time, reading and re-reading Oren’s words, afraid to believe I understood him correctly. I pictured him sitting there staring at that message for the entire hour since our conversation. How difficult must it have been for him to press send?

  I messaged him back:

  You’re crazy.

  He responded:

  I’m not crazy. I love you and I would do anything to make you happy.

  I knew this was his way of trying to be better—trying to be the opposite of his domineering, abusive father. Ever the martyr, that Oren. I shook my head at the words on the screen.

  Claire’s cello sang quietly from the other room. She must’ve been using a practice mute to dampen the sound. I took the opportunity to sneak past her and brush my teeth and pee in the tiny bathroom. Holding my breath, I rushed back to my bedroom and listened to the sound of her playing while I crushed a pillow to my chest and wished my feelings away.

  Monday morning we breakfasted with our fifteen students at one of the outdoor restaurants in the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro. I’d already read through the roster; judging by the institutions the students attended, we could expect a high level of playing at the festival. When we finished our food, Paolo announced the assignments and we splintered into groups to begin rehearsals.

  Only one venue had a piano, so the piano quintet would be practicing there with Paolo. Katrina would share coaching duties with him, and Raymond and Claire were teaming up to work with the sextet since there were more people in that group needing instruction.

  I had been assigned a quartet which would be playing a challenging work by the French composer Debussy. The five of us roamed the cobblestone streets in search of our rehearsal space, chattering and getting to know each other as we walked. Greg and Valerie, a violinist and cellist, respectively, were both older than I, and in the process of obtaining their doctorates. The other violinist, Ryan, and the violist, Iris, were both quite young, maybe twenty.

  Iris made my lip curl. With bronzed skin, toothpaste commercial teeth, and glossy, white-blond hair through which she never ceased to run her fingers, she was exactly the kind of girl I used to take shortcuts through the woods to avoid. Ryan was thin, translucent-skinned, and nerdy, and didn’t seem to know what to do with Iris. He blushed furiously every time she glanced in his direction. The older violinist, Greg, was trying hard to remain indifferent, but could not keep from stealing obvious looks at Iris’s breasts, which strained against a pink tank top.

  With some effort, I refrained from rolling my eyes and refocused on my map.

  “Mrs. Duval? Isn’t this it?” said Iris. Her voice rang at an unnaturally high pitch, like she’d cultivated it that way on purpose.

  I looked up at the building and back down at my map, noting the old church that had agreed to lend us space for our rehearsal. “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Valerie, winded from walking with her cello case slung over her shoulder. The cobblestone streets prevented her from rolling it. I wondered how Claire was managing lugging her cello around town.

  “We’re on the second floor,” I said. “They told us we could pick any room, that there are plenty of chairs, but they’re still renovating. We need to watch for debris.”

  “This is awesome,” said Greg, pushing open the heavy door of the old building. It was dark inside, apparently without working lights, and tarps had been stretched out over waist-high piles of stone and rubble. I hoped upstairs was in better condition. We climbed a flight of stairs and found that the second floor was marginally better than the first, but still had a crumbling, neglected feel to it.

  “This is going to agitate my allergies, I just know it,” Valerie said. She pushed her glasses up and and wrinkled her nose as she wheeled her cello around the piles of crumbled stone and wood littering the hallway.

  “Me too,” said Ryan.

  “But it’s so cool!” said Iris. “Like an old haunted house!”

  Valerie rolled her eyes. Ryan grinned and blushed.

  We ambled down the hallway peeking into rooms until we found one that had little debris and about ten chairs lined up against one wall. Natural light streamed through the windows, illuminating cracked plaster and a hundreds-year-old wooden shutter dangling by a single rusty hinge. I wanted to rip the shutter off the wall and hang it in my music room back home.

  We moved five chairs to the center of the room, set up wire music stands, and got started right away. I could see I had a good group. Ryan was the weakest of the four and would have to work hard to stay level with the others, but he was still reasonably proficient, and he could swing the concert perfectly well as long as he didn’t get nervous. I was surprised and a little irritated at what a fabulous violist Iris was. She reminded me so much of the mean girls from high school that I expected her shallowness to manifest itself in her playing somehow, but she played with sensitivity, clarity, and near faultless attention to detail.

  Greg and Valerie had played the piece before and had no trouble with its nuances, and Iris, being more talented than was fair, easily caught on. But poor Ryan, despite putting forth a valiant effort, struggled to keep up.

  Iris squinted at him every time he made a mistake. Twice he noticed and turned pink, and I wanted to rip the bleach blond hair out of Iris’s skull for embarrassing him. She’d make him so anxious he wouldn’t be able to perform the concert. I stood behind him for a while and caught her eye the next time she went to give him a disapproving glare. Her eyes widened when she saw the look I gave her, and after that she left him alone.

  We worked for hours, hardly noticing the time going by until our stomachs started growling. I picked on Iris’s playing more than anyone else’s and didn’t feel the least bit sorry about it.

  For lunch, the students headed together toward the Anfiteatro, but I wanted to be alone for a while before our afternoon rehearsal. After twenty minutes of wandering through side streets, I stumbled upon a tiny restaurant that seemed like the perfect place to enjoy a giant bowl of pesto verde all by myself. Inside, wood paneling lined the walls of the dim space, and black and white images of long-dead family members covered the walls. The smell of garlic permeated everything, but in a good way, making my mouth water.

  In one corner sat a group of gentleme
n smoking post-meal cigarettes, dirty bowls and half-empty wine glasses clustered on the table in front of them. Toward the middle of the dining area, a fashionable young couple picked at their food with their foreheads touching. Lovers, probably.

  On the other side of the room, by herself, was Claire.

  I should have been annoyed that I now had company when I had set out with a genuine desire for solitude, but my disobedient heart swelled at the sight of her. The moment she noticed me she was grinning and waving me over, excitement pouring out of her just like the day I first met her in the parking lot after my audition. Before I’d gone crazy. And now, seeing her sitting at that wooden table, all tiny and bouncy with her giant cello case pushed against the wall beside her, no lustful images popped into my head. In that moment, all I saw was Claire, my friend. I joined her at the table.

  A young waitress came to take my drink order. I saw that Claire had a glass of wine, so I ordered one too, along with a water.

  Claire made a smug face when I finished. “Nice Italian. All that studying paid off, didn’t it?”

  I laughed. “Indeed. So how is your sextet rehearsal? And where did Raymond run off to?”

  She waved her hand like she was shooing a fly. “He wanted to eat at the Anfiteatro with the others. I prefer these little places away from the tourists.” She sipped her wine. “Evidently so do you.”

  I nodded agreement as the waitress returned with a glass of wine and a bottle of water for me and set bowls of bread and olive oil on the table. “Grazie,” I told her.

  “Prego. Desidera ordinare qualcosa?”

  We both put in our orders, and after the waitress left, I said, “Did you just order rabbit?”

  Claire poured a puddle of olive oil onto her plate and mashed a hunk of bread into it. “What? If it’s on the menu at a little family place like this, how weird can it be?”